It is a fact that Japan is culturally different from the places I have been to before. So after 3 months here I finally decided to introduce myself to other people in the proper way, meaning presenting a business card or meishi to my interlocutor. The reason you do that usually is obviously to know the other person’s name but also to know what position he has in the company and to some extent how polite you talk to him. Also, anyone that has gone to the process to learn kanji, knows how tricky it can become with their readings and meanings…I thought it would be fun to have a business card with kanji for my name so I took on Sunday afternoon to look up my name and to find the right kanji. As close to the original meaning but also as close as possible to the pronounciation as vietnamese is partly derived from chinese and that Japanese borrowed the chinese characters (kanji). Did you get the picture? Before I show you the results of my search, there are 2 main issues with my choice:

  • some chinese characters do not exist in japanese and vice-versa, so one of the character is an old writing that do not exist in japanese. (but this is the fun part where you can explain the reading and meaning of your name to your interlocutor as he is probably puzzled)
  • japanese would probably not be able to pronounce my name correctly. Even vietnamese and chinese differ, so including a third language can be quite off the original pronouciation, but anyway intercultural exchanges have to be fun.

Here we go: 黄 寶 麟

  • 黄 : pronounced “huang” in chinese and it is probably one of the most common name for Chinese also. It refers to an emperor and the meaning is “yellow”
  • 寶 麟: pronounced “bao lin”, it literally means precious unicorn. In fact 寶 does not exist in japanese and 麟, pronounced rin in japanese is well-known thanks to kirin, the unicorn of one the most famous japanese brew.

meishi

By the way, if I make meishi why don’t I make an inkan or hanko with my name to sign papers like they do here in Japan. Well, it is done also as I do not have to look up the kanji again. Normally I would have to go to the city hall then to register my inkan so it would be my official signature. The fact is that I do not have many official papers to sign and it is just for fun whenever I received parcels or letter and so on. Not to say that I would probably not know how to register it at the city hall anyway.I will post the pictures soon but for now you can have a look at how I look in traditional man kimono (though it has another name I cannot remember).